by Frances
He had planned this, too. There was no use in trying to make it to the front, because the front door would be guarded. But there was a better way. In the wall under the curving stairs there was a door, and it opened on a flight of stairs leading down. Elliot went for it, moving fast and silently on the carpet. The door opened and Elliot went through it. He was pulling it behind him when he had another idea. The key—it was. His fingers groped on the wall beyond the door. The key ought to be—it was. Dutiful on its nail. It would be something if he needed it. Elliot took it along.
The stairs went down to a hall with doors opening off it. The one to the front was no good; it led to a storeroom and they would roust him out of that. The kitchen was the only way, and he hoped Mrs. Pennock would be somewhere else. He had no desire to meet Mrs. Pennock at any time and less now than at any other time. The kitchen was empty. He crossed it, moving still faster, and reached the door which opened on the paved court in the rear of the house. It was locked but the key was in it. Elliot went through, taking this key, also, with him. He closed the door and locked it from outside and started to throw the key away. Then he decided that it, too, might be useful. You couldn’t plan far enough ahead to be sure.
Now it ought to be easy if they gave him a few minutes. The paved court was fenced, but a gate opened on a passageway between the house and the apartment building next door, which led to the street. It provided a service entrance which the house and the apartment building shared. But it meant coming out to the street beside the house, and in plain sight of the guard which would surely be on the sidewalk in front. That meant—Elliot looked around. You had to improvise.
There was an empty wooden box lying against the fence. It looked as if a delivery boy from a grocery had left it there after emptying it of bread and bottles and packages of food. You had to improvise. Elliot picked the box up and swung it to his shoulder. He went up the passageway and, when he neared the front of the house, began to whistle. He whistled “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” not very well, but well enough. He stopped and tried to walk as he thought a delivery boy, perhaps done work for the day, would walk. He came out on the sidewalk whistling, saw a policeman standing in front of Ann’s house as he had expected, and did not look at him. He turned and began to walk, not hurrying too much, toward Lexington Avenue. He crossed the street diagonally and began to walk along beside the park fence.
He was not very far along beside the fence when there were sounds behind him and the door of Ann’s house was flung open and somebody yelled something angrily, presumably at the policeman on guard outside. Elliot did not hear clearly what was said, but he didn’t need to. He hoped he was only a vague figure in the snow—a vague figure of a delivery boy with an empty box on his shoulder. But he was too close to run. There ought to be a gate along here somewhere.
He came to it almost as soon as he hoped. The key was going to be useful after all. But he couldn’t carry the box in. Delivery boys didn’t get into the only private park left in New York City; the only park owned by the property owners around it, kept sacred under lock to their moments of outdoor relaxation. Elliot put the box down and stood up straight and took his time unlocking the gate. But he took as little time as he could without hurrying. The gate was heavy and reluctant, but he pushed it open. He took the key out of the lock and closed the gate and locked it behind him. For a moment, anyway, they couldn’t get to him.
But except for inadequate evergreens, the park was bare, offering little cover, leaving him visible from outside by anyone who wanted to look through the iron fence. And somebody would, probably, want to look through the iron fence. He moved unhurriedly along the path to the right and tried to look like a very respectable property owner taking a stroll in the open. But it was obviously an unlikely time to be taking a stroll.
He heard, then, the sounds of a heavy man running along the public walk outside the fence and he forced himself not to look around. He sauntered along, but the nerves crept at the back of his neck. Nobody was going to think he was merely walking in the snow for—then he thought of it. You could improvise, all right, when you had to.
An instant before the running feet outside were even with him, John Elliot stopped. He stopped near one of the evergreen bushes and held his right arm out toward it as if he were pointing. He held the right hand curved, as if it were lightly curved around something—a leash, perhaps. The feet stopped opposite him and Elliot turned to face the policeman, as a man in no fear of policemen might have done. The policeman stopped and looked in through the fence at John Elliot, staring through the curtain of falling snow.
“Hey, you!” the policeman said. Then he said, “Oh, sorry, mister.”
“Yes, officer?” John Elliot said. “Did you want something?”
“Didja see a guy running up this way?” the policeman said. “A guy with a box, maybe?”
“No,” said Elliot. “I didn’t see anybody. Or hear anybody. Did somebody get away?”
“Well,” the policeman said, “so you didn’t see anybody, mister? Any guy running?”
“No,” Elliot said. “I didn’t see anybody. Maybe he ran the other way.”
“Yeah,” the policeman said. “Hell of a night, ain’t it? But it don’t mean nothing to them.”
“Them?” Elliot repeated. Then he caught himself. “Oh,” he said, and looked down in the direction of his pointing right hand. “Them. No, regardless of the weather, they—”
The policeman wasn’t listening. He was turning away. He called back, “Thanks, mister,” and went toward Ann’s house through the snow. John Elliot figured it was all right, but he acted out the rest of it. He moved his right arm as if he were pulling something; he said, just audibly, “come on, you!” He walked away along the path, continuing to look as much as he could like a man walking a dog. He kept the hand which held the mythical leash a little out from his body, as if a dog were tugging at it.
He abandoned this when he was half around the park, and walked more briskly. He let himself out of the park opposite The Players and crossed the street diagonally, avoiding the club entrance and the entrance next to it. When he got to Irving Place he walked down it a block or two and waited for a bus. When the bus came he got on, shaking his overcoat and knocking snow off his hat and as he dropped his nickel in the coin box he told the driver it was a rotten night. The driver made an agreeing sound. Elliot took a seat on the left side of the bus, which went on around the park. As it went by Ann’s house, Elliot stared out the window into the snow, although he wanted to see what was going on. As the bus turned north again he looked across it and out the windows on the right, and got a glimpse of the street in front of the house. A taxicab was stopping and a man was helping a woman out.
Elliot, feeling he had improvised to good purpose, stayed on the bus until it reached Grand Central. Then he got out and, after a little trouble, waved down a taxicab. He gave an address to the taxi-driver and got in. From now on, he would have to have some help.
Bill Weigand was not in a good humor. Once it was evident that Patrolman McKenna, who had stopped John Elliot’s glass brick, was dented but basically sound, Bill Weigand gave Patrolman McKenna a description of himself. It was low-voiced, bitter and thorough; if Patrolman McKenna met himself soon, he would recognize himself with embarrassment. And then Weigand set things going. A description of John Elliot went out through the city, and through the adjacent states for good measure. Men of the precinct hurried through the neighborhood, looking unpleasantly at innocent men who happened to be, like Elliot, tall and thin. They found Elliot’s box quite soon; the patrolman on guard outside remembered vaguely that somebody, carrying a box, had come out from between the house and the building next door. Weigand described the patrolman on outside guard more briefly, but with vigor. Then, sighing, Weigand telephoned Inspector O’Malley, who when he answered had to leave the stud game with a king in the hole and another showing, and a round—which long afterward O’Malley was still certain would have brought hi
m another king, particularly after he discovered that two pairs had taken the pot—coming up.
Inspector O’Malley listened and exploded into the telephone. Bill Weigand listened to a description of himself which gave him several new ideas. Bill hung up and sighed and turned impatiently to a patrolman who was beginning to make sounds at his elbow.
“Well?” Bill Weigand said. “Well?”
“Some people,” the patrolman said. “Your wife and some people, Lieutenant. A Mr. and Mrs.—”
“Yes,” Weigand said. “I thought—” He broke off. “Ask my wife and the Norths to come in here, Smith,” he said. He waited in the living room, looking with continued disfavor at Patrolman McKenna, who was lying on a couch and holding his head and now and then sighing heavily. “Shut up,” Weigand said. “Did baby bump its little head?”
“What?” said Pam North from the door. “What baby? Whose head? And what’s happened to you, Bill?”
Bill looked at the three and started to speak and gave it up.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just that the boys let a murderer walk out on them. Let him walk right through him. It seems to have annoyed the inspector.”
Pam said “oh” and added that it was too bad. Dorian said, “Bill! I’m sorry, dear.”
Bill Weigand smiled at them, not broadly.
“Oh,” he said, “we’ll pick him up. In time. And I’ll soothe the inspector down. In time. Don’t worry, children.”
“Well, then,” Pam said, “if it’s really all right, we can tell you. She’s wearing her clothes.”
Weigand looked at them.
“Please,” Bill Weigand said. “Please, Pam.”
“Frances,” Pam said. “The girl in the cafeteria. This girl’s clothes. So it’s really one case, after all.”
Bill continued to look at them. He looked at them anxiously.
“That’s right, Bill,” Dorian said. “The girl who was killed in the restaurant. Frances somebody. She was wearing a dress which had been cleaned for the girl who was killed here. Ann something.”
“McCalley,” Jerry North said. “Lawrence.”
“So,” Pam said, “obviously one man killed them both. So it couldn’t have been the girl’s boy and we have to start all over. So it was right about the apple.”
Weigand got it straightened out in a moment, and his interest rose as it straightened. But then he shook his head at Pam. He told her that she was jumping again. He said, as Jerry had, that the dress might have come from a thrift shop, and that it might be coincidence. Pam merely stared at him.
“All right,” he said. “I don’t like that either. Which doesn’t prove it isn’t true. Or the Martinelli boy may have killed them both, for some reason. Or the guy who got away from here may have killed them both. Or Martinelli may have killed the McCalley girl and Elliot may have killed Miss Lawrence. Or—”
“Or a couple of other fellows,” Pam told him. “You don’t believe any of it, Bill.”
But Bill Weigand would not admit that. He shook his head. It might be anyway. A person they didn’t know yet might have killed both girls; two people they didn’t know yet might each have killed a girl.
Weigand looked beyond the Norths and Dorian, and Sergeant Mullins was standing in the doorway. He looked very unhappy. When he saw that Weigand was looking at him, Mullins shook his head dolefully and formed a word with his mouth. Mullins gave the whole affair a vote of no confidence.
“Yes, Mullins?” Bill Weigand said. “Oh, you came with the others? Right.”
“Yeah,” Mullins said. “So he got away, Loot? This guy who did it? Only now I guess he didn’t.”
“Why, Mullins?” Weigand wanted to know.
Mullins told him. It would be too simple. It would be like the way cases used to be.
“Before—” Mullins said, rather darkly, looking at Mr. and Mrs. North. “In the good old days, sort of.”
Weigand told Mullins that the inspector didn’t think it was too easy; that the inspector thought Elliot did it. The inspector had been touched and pleased when Elliot walked in.
“Walked in?” Pam North repeated.
Bill told her what Stein had told him, filling in details. Elliot had walked in after the body of Ann Lawrence had been found, and after police in the first radio patrol car had arrived. He had walked in, he said, to take Ann to a cocktail party, in accordance with an arrangement. He had been surprised and shocked. He had also been held.
“But doesn’t that prove—?” Pam said. “No, of course it doesn’t. Because if he was, he would have because it looked so innocent, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “That’s why it didn’t impress the inspector.”
Then Bill Weigand was a little surprised at himself, because he had not been at all puzzled by what Pam North had said, and this was against nature. Evidently somebody’s nature was changing. He let Pam’s words echo faintly in his mind. It was his nature that was changing, all right. It was a little alarming to think that, because if it went on there might come a time when he could speak only to Pam North with any assurance of being understood. A closed corporation, like God and the Cabots. Or God and the Lowells? But Jerry North, whose nature had had a far longer time to adjust itself had ended in no such predicament. And he would always have Dorian—he hoped—as a counterbalance.
“But if he wasn’t, he still Would, assuming they did have,” Dorian said.
Bill Weigand and Jerry North looked at each other.
“I don’t know,” Jerry said, gently and as if from far away. “I don’t know, Bill. Is it something in all of them, do you suppose? Or just these?”
“Dorian!” Bill said firmly, chidingly. “Darling!”
“Well,” Dorian said, “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the goose. Or ought to be. What I meant, of course, was—”
“I know what you meant,” Bill told her. “You meant that if they had had an engagement and if he was not the murderer, and didn’t know of the murder, he would naturally come around at the time agreed upon to pick her up.”
“Obviously,” Dorian agreed. “Only people don’t talk that way.”
“Particularly here,” Jerry said.
Pam said she thought they were all talking nonsense.
“Where did he go?” Pam said. “How did he do it?”
Bill Weigand knew by now, and told her what he knew. John Elliot had knocked out his guardian policeman, gone out the rear, carried a box past the policeman in front, entered Gramercy Park by using the key which belonged to the Lawrence house, and pretended to be walking a dog.
“Why,” Pam said, “didn’t the cop see the dog? The dog that wasn’t there, I mean.”
“Snow,” Weigand told her. “And he thought it was behind a bush. If he thought.”
Pam pointed out that Elliot wanted to get away very much, which was odd if he were innocent.
“Unless,” she said, “he knew some way to prove he was innocent, but had to get away to do it. Which is possible.”
“Listen,” Mullins said. “I don’t get this.” He looked at alt of them. “Any of it,” he said, with finality.
Mullins brought Weigand back to immediate problems. One of them, which was to question Elliot, could not now be met. Another could. For that he could use helpers, and now he had them. He picked Dorian and Jerry and told them what to do; he took Pam with him to the third floor, where Mrs. Pennock dwelt alone, and to the bathroom from which she had heard the quarrel in Ann Lawrence’s sitting room. Pam sat down on the edge of the bed and Weigand closed the door and leaned against it. They listened to the ventilator. For a moment nothing came from it. Then Dorian’s voice came, with remarkable clearness.
“Personally,” she said, “I think it’s a trick. To get up there alone. Don’t you—darling!”
“Obviously,” Jerry said, his voice also startlingly clear. “Our lawyers shall hear—Dorian!”
The last was in a voice which was filled with an emotion which for a moment struck Pam, who
had never heard it, as one of anguish. Then she decided it was supposed to represent pleased surprise, colored with rapture. There was another sound through the ventilator and there was no doubt about it. Bill Weigand approached the ventilator in Mrs. Pennock’s bathroom and spoke at it, firmly.
“Children,” he said. “Children! No games.”
“Do you suppose,” Pam said, in a low voice, “that they really kissed? The way it sounded? I just wonder.”
“Don’t,” Bill told her. “It will just encourage them.” He spoke again to the ventilator. “Go away from there and do what I say,” he told Dorian and Jerry. “Go out into the other room and do what I said.”
There was a faint sound of movement from below, carried with reasonable clearness through the ventilator. Then there was a silence and then, much more distant, Dorian’s voice.
“I’ve made up my mind too, Johnny. Unless you do—”
“It’s a showdown, then,” Jerry said. “You can’t—”
“Was that what she heard?” Pam said. “The girl and this John Elliot? Saying that?”
“Or about that,” Bill told her. “She could have, evidently. Now—”
New sounds came from the ventilator. Thudding sounds as of someone moving heavily on a carpeted floor; a louder sound, as if a chair had been knocked over.
“She heard that too,” Bill Weigand told Pam. “Or says she did. Now listen.”
There was a very faint sound, which they could hear only because they were listening closely, and which might have been the closing of the door between the sitting room and the bath-dressing room. Then, very far off, there was a continuing sound of voices. They seemed to be the voices of a man and a woman, but it would have been impossible to identify either speaker, or any of the words they used.
Weigand nodded. That fitted too; it seemed to work out as Mrs. Pennock said it worked out. So—He turned to open the door. But then Pam suddenly, quickly, shook her head and held up a warning hand and he stopped. Because there was another voice, neither Dorian’s nor Jerry’s, coming out of the ventilator, and the words could be distinguished.